Go here to view the age of consent for sexual relations in 1880 America, and prepare to be shocked: https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/24.html . I first found this out from Marvin Olasky’s 2023 book The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652–2022. And I’m still puzzling over it if not downright bothered by it!
“In 1894, the age of consent was seven years in Delaware, ten or twelve in fifteen other states, and thirteen or fourteen in twenty more” (Olasky, Story of Abortion in America, 194).
Having crossed the frontier of morality with easy divorce, open acceptance of living together, and gay being okay, it really wasn’t much of a leap, morally speaking, to reach gay marriage and transgenderism. It was a great leap forward in a denial of reality, and like Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward (’58-’62) unleased a food famine that is estimated to have killed from 15-50 million people, our great leap has unleashed irrationality to an extreme. Evidence drag queens reading to children at public libraries; pride month celebrated and only curtailed when retailers lose money; a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod “pastor” dressing drag and kissing an elder in Divine Service. (I cannot find documentation for this, but I know it happened, and the person who complained to the district about it was reprimanded for complaining.)
The uncrossed frontiers remaining our incest and pedophilia. There have been groups, at least since the 80’s promoting the latter. The incest frontier is increasingly being crossed or suggested in movies and shows.
It seems the only way to guard the pedophilia border from those who will research how early the age of consent was here in the United States into the late 19th century is to point out that the U.S. grew out of that error. In the same way the American Medical Association in the late 19th century “grew out” of thinking that a baby wasn’t a baby till viability.
I have noticed the defenders of LGBTQ and abortion are growing increasingly sophisticated in their attacks. They are willing to concede somethings such as life begins at conception and God does condemn brutal homosexuality while attacking on another front.
Although I cannot fathom how up till late 1800’s churchmen who were speaking out against abortion and contraception accepted 12 and young as an age of consent, I expect it had something to do with the early marriage age found in Biblical times and arranged marriages in the Early through the Reformation church.
Finally, forewarned is forearmed. One of the most discomfiting things to happen in an argument, for me anyway, is to be surprised by some fact that blows my mind initially. It is like being hit upside the head, getting your bell rung, and then I have a hard time seeing not just plainly but anything at all.
